Putting the 'ill' back in thriller

Archive for the tag “Fat”

Memes fly around the internet like quantum accelerated particles. Some are fun, some are informative, others are utterly ridiculously wrong. Unfortunately people get caught up in pretty pictures with inspiring – or is that insipid – quotes printed on them, so they start following someone on social media, someone who spreads as much nonsense as inspirational quotes.

Take for example this quote from Mark Twain:
At face value there is a great message from Twain about not storing up emotional baggage. Let’s just ignore the scientific inaccuracy of how acids work and how the materials of the respective containers and the Ka (acid dissociation constant) of the acid are going to be the deciding factors in how much damage the acid does. But once you move past the quote and pretty picture you start to notice certain things about the picture, namely that there is some weird design stuff going on it. There’s some spacey looking stuff in the background, there’s a person with no skin, and some sort of lattice work design: what the hell is this stuff? That’s called the Flower of Life, something that has been incorporated into Sacred Geometry, a load of nonsense that would have Mark Twain penning scathing insults toward; Twain loved science.

Let’s take a look at another meme:

Again we have a bit of text that implies that good relationships are much deeper than the shallow, fleeting, physical attraction. This one is, however, more obvious in its ridiculousness. In amongst the rainbows and pretty city the two outlines of people are hovering above, there are glowing lights in the bodies of the people. Take a guess at what they are meant to be. Chakras. That’s right, we’ve gone all new-agey nonsense right out in the open. So once you spot the new-age nonsense you realise the word “soul” isn’t being used in the allegorical sense but in the “I believe all sorts of rubbish” sense.

And now we descend into health nuttery:

This is a typical health meme that these sorts of social media pages post: half truths, misconceptions, lies and nonsense.

Let’s start at the top: there are no pus cells in milk. The meme seems to be referring to the somatic cell count of milk, which is not the same thing, and just part of the biology fail on display here. The 135 million figure is from the detection levels for mastitis in cows, which says that uninfected cows will have less than 150,000 cells/mL (they’ve clearly scaled up to a litre of milk in that glass, which doesn’t look like a litre glass to me).

Growth hormones: misleading at best. Food has hormones in it, produced by the food, be that plants or animals. Remember how soy is meant to be good for menopausal women? Yep: plant hormones. So milk will have naturally occurring hormones in it. Some countries have limited/banned the use of growth hormones in animal production, others have allowed it. And this brings us to one of the many reasons pasteurisation is used in milk production, as it breaks down most of the hormones.

Feces: again this is misleading, and also one of the main reasons for pasteurisation. You aren’t so much going to end up with feces in the milk as the bacteria associated. So it is important to kill the nasties and why raw milk is considered dangerous.

Acidic protein: This one is quite funny because there are a lot of acidic proteins. And obviously these acidic proteins leaching calcium from bones is one of those things that “mainstream medicine is ignoring” – aka the rallying cry made by purveyors of nonsense. Pity that dietary protein (which can include dairy) has actually been shown to be good for bones. The issue here is actually a couple of health myths. The first is the acid/alkaline dietthat isutter nonsense. The second is the overstating of health benefits of milk, specifically as they relate to bone health and osteoporosis development.

Now I’m not saying that milk is bad for you, but it also isn’t the most awesome drink ever made – that would be whiskey. Milk should be like whiskey: consumed in moderation.

The point about memes is that they are only as good as their creator. The intention of the above memes is clearly to help people, inspire them to lead better lives, even if it is by showing them some pretty pictures with brain droppings written on them. But sadly it is obvious that these memes were created by someone who is not in touch with reality, which makes their health advice something to be avoided. Beware the meme: it could be nonsense!

The cardio folks usually point out the “afterburner” effect, where the body continues to burn calories even after the workout. And weight lifting people mention that muscles burn more calories than fat, so more muscle is the key.

Are there studies showing if either one is true? Or are both needed? And what about interval training?

Answer:

This is a tough question to answer as there are a lot of ifs and buts.

Weight loss is all about caloric deficit, expend more energy than you consume and you lose weight. Most people do this by dieting, but the body tends to readjust the resting metabolic rate so that you don’t lose too much reserves. Thus exercise plusdiet is needed for weight loss to be effective.

How effective is ‘Diet Only’ versus ‘Diet plus Exercise’ for Weight Loss? Most studies demonstrate that when diet (caloric restriction) and physical activity are combined in a weight management program, encouraging results in weight loss occur. Donnelly and colleagues (2009) explain that a weight loss program design may create an energy deficit (e.g., 500 to 1500) composed of exercise (e.g., 250 kilocalories/day) and caloric restriction (e.g., 250 kilocalories/day) for the daily caloric deficit total (500 kilocalories in this example). In studies where investigators introduce an energy deficit of 700 to 1000 kilocalories per day, ‘diet only’ and ‘diet plus exercise’ result in similar losses. Donnelly explains that this is due to metabolic adaptations that “diminish any additive effect of energy expenditure from physical activity on weight loss”. However, in investigations where the energy deficit is 500-700 kilocalories/day, the ‘diet plus exercise’ group is about 20% greater than the ‘diet only’ intervention.

Exercise is usually broken down into two categories: cardio and weight training. There are many benefits to both and generally both are recommended for long term health. Weight training is known to burn fat.

This study is the first to directly show that resistance exercise increases adipose tissue lipolysis and thus contributes to improved body composition. This boost in lipolysis is apparently due to the excitatory effect of resistance training on specific hormones (e.g., epinephrine, norepinephrine and growth hormone). As this study design was completed with trained male subjects, it is hoped that the methods and procedures will be completed with other subject populations (e.g., females, untrained persons, youth, seniors, overweight, etc.) in future research.

For cardio training, there is obviously fat burning taking place. The amount of fat burning that occurs is related to the intensity of the cardio.

In summary, that data clearly show that exercise intensity is the main factor in determining the magnitude and duration of EPOC following aerobic exercise. Thus, when developing a cardiorespiratory exercise prescription for weight maintenance and weight loss, the influence of exercise intensity on EPOC and its potential contribution to total caloric expenditure should be taken into consideration.

The same is true of weightlifting (from the same article):

The data on resistance training and EPOC suggest that EPOC is distinctly influenced by the intensity of the resistance training program.

The actual amount of post activity “fat burning” will be related to the intensity and duration of the exercise done. Weightlifting has advantages in terms of encouraging muscle satellite cell accumulation that sustains and grows muscle. Cardio has the benefit that it can be performed for longer durations than weightlifting. So the essential answer will come down to the individual and their strength and fitness.

Essentially any exercise program should incorporate both cardio and weight training for weight loss, especially targeting fat loss.

Further question: Hey, do you think I can get the source on your statement that “the body tends to readjust the resting metabolic rate so that you don’t lose too much reserves.”? I’m rather curious about this. – Joel Cornett

Reply: Joel, there is a lot of research related to metabolic rate and how it changes under dieting and exercise regimes. It is quite a complex topic because it depends upon many factors. Someone who has just started dieting will be different from someone who is active already in terms of responses. Here is one paper that looks at the overweight people and weight control. I linked to Kravitz’s other articles that cover some of the athlete side of metabolism in the last link.

A lot of things have changed in our modern society. I’m writing on the internet, you could be from just about anywhere in the world, and we can all agree that the US government should tactically nuke the Kardashian residence. Bigots are no longer able to say the things they used to be able to. In this modern age they need to know who it is okay to insult.

Former Targets

Racism, sexism and the like are no longer cool. We’ve realised that everyone has the same colour blood, that women and men are two sides of the same coin and that religions are all saying roughly the same thing – hell, Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

It has to be said that gay people, especially men, still suffer as a target of bigotry. I’ll leave it to Steve Hughes to point out the flaws in the bigot’s statements.

Line Call

Fundamentalist religious kooks

Yes, kooks. Even I can’t help myself. The reality is that there are extremists out there hiding under the banner of religion. It is a pity they are giving religion a bad name, especially with the promotion of anti-science. As a result it is only okay to be bigoted against idiots who are giving religious people a bad name.

New (acceptable) Bigotry Targets

Fat people

Between the double chin and the ability to eat a weeks worth of groceries in one sitting, fat people are one giant target for bigots. There is no end of insults available and doing so only makes them an even bigger target, as they seek comfort snacks. Plus, it is easy to justify the insults out of love and concern for their health. And the laughs.

Racists

It’s about time racists got a taste of their own medicine.

Sexists

This group are so popular that you don’t even have to be a sexist to have been accused of being a sexist. All you have to do is be part of the demographic that used to be sexists a generation ago.

Scientists

Where do scientists get off anyway? They just don’t understand the world like normal people. With all of their study into how the world works, they have lost touch with all the people who don’t know about the world. Snooty bastards!

Politicians

This group have always been a bigotry target and they will remain one of our favourite targets until society dispenses with them for good. Fuck ’em.

Reality TV Stars

If they are going to be attention whores, then at least let the attention be negative. The person who flour-bombed Kim Kardashian recently got their bigotry target right.

People who are sick but come in to work anyway.

You know who you are. We all hope you burn in hell next to the rapists, child molesters and people who talk on the phone in the cinema.

People who talk on the phone in the cinema.

These people rightly deserve every ounce of hate they receive. Hopefully it comes in the form of Terry Tate.